Many new projects experience delays in the "fuzzy front end," resulting in a compressed time schedule, unrealistic expectations, and staff burnout.  How do you start "sprinting" when you don't know which direction you should be headed, and you haven't even finished staffing up your team?   In a federal government contracting milieu, once a procurement is finally awarded, the contractor is expected to instantly spring into action and magically "do the right thing."    What techniques can help us get started? Scrum's "Sprint Zero" (although it is now appearing in many government RFPs) is an altogether unsatisfactory answer.   In this talk we will trace the evolution of a project for the Department of Homeland Security from a vague idea to a completed prototype and see how personal kanban, aggregated personal kanban, kanban boards, physical boards and automated kanban tools helped turn chaos into useful progress and ultimately into flow.

1. Craeg Strong
CTO, Ariel Partners
May 9, 2017
Vienna, VA
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Kanban Response to Sprint Zero
At US Department of
Homeland Security

2. Software Development since 1988
Large Commercial & Government Projects
Agile Coach / DevOps Engineer
Kanban Trainer / SpecFlow Trainer
Performance & Scalability Architect
Certified Ethical Hacker
New York & Washington DC Area
CTO, Ariel Partners
AKT, CSM, CSP, CSD, CSPO, PSM,
ITILv3, PMI-ACP, PMP, LeSS, SAFe
www.arielpartners.com
cstrong@arielpartners.com
@ckstrong1
Craeg Strong
© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394

3. Agenda
Experience Report: Hackathon For USCIS
How Kanban Helped Us Get Organized
How Our Process Evolved
What We Built
Observations and Lessons Learned
Big Picture: Government IT
Changes In Government IT Procurement
Challenges
Doing Things Better
Conclusion
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4. Mission: Possible
Ten People
Five States
Four Companies
Three Weekends
Brand New Software Application
Cutting Edge Technology Platform
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5. How To Get Started?
Setup the Network
Configure Team Laptops
Assess Team Member Skills
Define Product Vision
Create Repository
Seed Database
Login Screen
Static Code Analysis
Configure Automated Builds
Sign up for Cloud Services
Configure Automated Deployment
Create GUI Mockups
Story Mapping
Wireframes
Automated Test Framework
Feature Tests
Test Reports
Customer Journey Map
Competitive Product Analysis
Determine Technology Compatibility
Developer IDE Setup
Scheduling and Team Logistics
Setup Team Wiki
Design Kanban System
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6. Prince Charming To The Rescue
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Aggregated
Personal
Kanban

7. 7© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394
First Board

8. 8© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394
Forward Progress

9. Pros and Cons
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NEGATIVE
 Not Measuring Business Value
 No Easy Way For Multiple Team
Members To Coordinate Efforts
 Bottlenecks Are Not Obvious
 Don’t Know What We Don’t Know
POSITIVE
 Ensures Everyone Has Something To
Do
 Can See What Each Team Member Is
Working On
 Captures All The Immediate Tasks
 Add/Remove Tasks Anytime

10. 10© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394
Kanban System Design
Upstream DownstreamCommitment
Point
Pull
Policies

11. Physical Kanban Board
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NEGATIVE
 Difficult To Capture Metrics For
Compressed Timeframe
 Physical Board Imposed Too
much overhead
POSITIVE
 Captures Flow of Business Value
 Easy To Coordinate / Collaborate
 Bottlenecks Clearly Visible
 No Hidden Workflow Steps

12. 12© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394
Replicating The Physical Board
LEANKIT IMPOSED
RELATIVELY FEW
LIMITATIONS

13. 13© Copyright Ariel Partners 2017 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394
Further Refinements
 RED COLOR TICKET RATHER
THAN EXPEDITE LANE
 SMALL PHOTO SHOWS WHO
IS ASSIGNED
 MORE THAN ONE PERSON
CAN BE ASSIGNED TO A
FEATURE

14. What We Built
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15. How We Built It:
One Tiny Piece At A Time
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1. Manual
Entry of Email
2. Dropdown 4. Type-
Ahead
3. Don’t Show
My Email

16. Addressing “Startup” Sources Of Delay
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• Aggregated Personal KanbanGetting Started
• Kanban System DesignDesigning A New Process
• On-Line Learning Sources: Udemy, Pluralsight, etc.
• Face-Time, Collaboration, Pair-Programming
• Kanban Board Shows Who Is Pairing
Mastering New
Technologies
• Cloud For Test And Demo Deployments = HUGE WIN
Deploying New Features
And Fixes
• Solution: Start With A Seed Project
Building Features
Together With Automated
Tests
Biggest
Bottleneck

17. Some Minor Tool Limitations
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Couldn’t Figure Out How To Represent ThisMulti-Level Board
Missing Minimum WIP Limit (To Prevent
Downstream Starvation)
WIP Limit
No Relationships Other Than Parent-Child
Relating Features and
Stories
Timestamps cannot be changed later,
preventing correction of errors and skewing
metrics and reports
No Way To Fix Entry
Errors: Tool Assumes
Perfection
Tool Assumes Timeframes Will Always Be
Measured In Days/Weeks rather than
Minutes/Hours
No Sub-Day Timeframes

18. How Does This Relate To Government
IT Procurement?
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19. Government Is Modernizing
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Agile Lifecycle
Waterfall
Massive, Multi-Year Procurements Small, Short Task Orders

20. But There Are Still Many Challenges
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Procurement
Challenges
 Annual Budgeting Cycle
 Lengthy Approval Process
 Significant Penalty for
Failure
 Entrenched Organizational
Structure
 Well-defined Roles and
Responsibilities
 Optimized for Repetitive
Execution
 Intentional Inefficiencies
to Discourage Malfeasance
Organizational
Challenges
Technical
Challenges
 Multiple Legacy Systems
 Manual Processes and
Workarounds
 Obsolete Technology

21. JumpStart Strategy For System
Development
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 The Kanban Method
 Kanban System Design
 Working “Seed” Software
 Representative Set of Automated Tests
 Fully Automated Deployments
 Shared User Experience (GUI) Design
 Shared Software Components
Solve The “Easy” Problems So We Can Focus on the Really
Tough Ones
 Business Stakeholder Engagement
 Staff Resistance & Sabotage
 Business Domain Understanding
 Undocumented Legacy Systems

22. Maintaining Application Seed:
Ongoing Investment
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ASP/JSP
JQuery
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
ReactJS
AngularJS 4.x?
AngularJS 1.x
Development
Incremental
Improvements
Development
Incremental
Improvements
Development
Level of Investment

23. Review:
Typical “Sprint Zero” Tasks
Identify Stakeholders
Articulate the Vision
Build versus buy
decisions
Secure Physical Space
Assemble the Team
Establish Initial Technical
Architecture
Establish Initial DevOps
Pipeline
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Start Immediately
Kanban Method
Application Seed
Scrum Pre-Requisites

24. Conclusions
• Government Adopting Agile Practices
• …But Environment Remains Agile-Hostile
• Kanban Provides Overall Framework For
Managing Continuous or Disruptive Change
• Strategy: Solve The “Easy” Problems…So We
Can Focus on the Really Hard Ones
• With Some Up-Front Investment We Can
Radically Improve Outcomes
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